by Mary McBride
“I have more to say to you, Kate Logan, but I’m too damn angry with you right now. Between Isaac being sick and you running off and your eldest son telling me what a goddamn coward I am, I’m hardly fit to do anything right now but wring somebody’s neck.”
Kate looked at his big, fisted hands before she reached down for the reins he had dropped. She rippled them over the horse’s back. “Let’s go home, Race. I might be ready to listen by the time you’re ready to talk.”
* * *
It took Honey a good three hours to get back to Cerrillos—three hours of tripping over her hem, stubbing her toes on unexpectedly high cross ties and spikes, stumbling and muttering curses to herself as well as to the hot sun over her head. By the time she traipsed into Cerrillos, the hotel was a heap of charred lumber where an occasional flame spurted up, then flickered out. A few men loitered nearby, scratching their heads and looking dazed, but otherwise the town seemed to have returned to its customary quiet.
In the livery stable, Jonquil nickered as if happy to see her, and Honey looped her arms around the mare’s big, warm neck, wetting it with her tears.
“I need to find him, girl,” she whispered. “Help me. Please. Help me find him.”
It didn’t matter, Honey thought, if Gideon didn’t love her. It didn’t matter if everything he’d said had been a lie. If he had only used the dream of a future together in Kansas to lure her off the burning roof, Honey didn’t care. She loved him. That was all that mattered. And she couldn’t bear the thought that his going back to prison would be all her fault. Worse, she couldn’t rid herself of the image of the wolf in the trap. Gideon, if caught, might very well choose death over a return to prison.
Her mother had jokingly called her Miss Fix-It. Maybe so. But Honey knew that if she failed to fix this, Gideon might very well die. And if Gideon died, so would her heart.
She saddled Jonquil as quickly as she could. Then, once up on the dun mare’s back, Honey headed up into the hills again, toward the abandoned mine, toward Gideon Summerfield, she hoped, before it was too late.
Chapter Eighteen
Dwight Samuel lowered the jug of mescal, then used the back of his hand to wipe away the liquor that had drizzled into his dark beard. Above the beard and the black mustache, his eyes gleamed drunkenly in the firelight.
“Damn, Gid. You did right well by us with that ransom. I thank you. I truly do.” He passed the jug to his cousin, who was leaning on one elbow, legs slung out and boots pointed to the fire.
“Family,” Gideon grunted. He tipped the jug, barely wet his lips with the fiery brew, then passed it on to Charlie Buck.
“We ain’t got all that much family left with Jesse gone.” Dwight’s voice was a rough mix of sorrow and bitterness and mescal. Then he laughed. “And, hell, them that’s left won’t claim us.”
Young Shooter took his turn with the jug, passing his sleeve over his mouth in imitation of Dwight. “You got us, Dwight,” the boy said, then flashed a lopsided grin.
“You ain’t exactly in Jesse’s league,” the bearded outlaw muttered.
“Well, I never claimed I was,” the boy countered. “Could be, though. I damn well could be.”
Charlie Buck nudged his elbow into Shooter’s ribs. “Sure you could, kid. Just like I could be governor of the Territory of New Mexico.” The Indian jerked his thumb toward the two drunk Mexicans. “Or like Cordera there or Valez could be U.S. marshals.”
While Shooter sulked and the Mexicans laughed, Gideon just stared into the fire. Family. The word clanged in his head, off-key as a cracked bell. He flicked his gaze toward Dwight, one of the cousins who had picked up a ten-year-old boy by the scruff of the neck, put him on a horse, then rode him off into a life on the run.
He’d been running—a thief in the night—the devil at his back and the law on his tail—for more than twenty years now. Except for the time he’d tried to settle down with Cora. Except for the years he’d been in the penitentiary. But he’d been running from other devils then. God Almighty, he was tired of running.
At the edge of the campfire a dry branch of juniper ignited, crackling and sending up a quick blue-green, sea-colored flame. Bright eyes! Gideon’s mouth tightened as he envisioned the color of Honey Logan’s eyes, as he recalled the fierce fire that had raged in them when she’d cracked the flat of her hand across his cheek that morning.
Her mother had probably set her straight on the train back to Santa Fe. Kate Logan didn’t strike him as the kind of woman who’d let her daughter live with a lie, so she would have told Honey just what was what—how he was doing this on the right side of the law for Race Logan, how demanding the ransom hadn’t been his idea, how he truly cared about her, cared too damn much to ruin her life.
And that, he thought gloomily now, was something he might already have done. What if she were carrying his child? Honey herself had mentioned the possibility—with a certain wistfulness in her voice and happy stars in her young eyes, as he recalled. He never, never should have touched her. Gideon cursed himself for the thousandth time that day, and for the thousandth time reveled in the memory of that touching, that loving. He pictured Honey’s dark shawl of hair, slipping over her shoulders, sliding away to reveal the perfect paleness of her skin, the sweet perfection of her breasts.
Hell, that baby, if it existed, would be better off being raised a Logan rather than a Summerfield. Honey’s mother would make her see that, too. He hoped.
What was it the Logan woman had said to him? Something about needing an angel on his side? Sweet notion, that, but didn’t she know he’d only drag her daughter down? Or did she truly believe, as Honey seemed to believe, that she could raise him up, share her own white, feathery, hopeful wings with him?
Up, Gideon thought bleakly, wasn’t where he was headed. And it wasn’t Kansas either with its green and wind-touched rows of corn and wheat. And not prison. If he didn’t know anything else, Gideon knew that. He wasn’t going back. For a while, under Honey’s warm spell, he had thought he could go back, put in his time and earn the freedom to be with Honey. Now that she was gone, he was thinking a bit more clearly.
He levered up now and shifted his legs, leaning closer to his black-bearded cousin. “If you liked the taste of that ransom, Dwight, maybe you’d like to hear about a sweet little bank in Santa Fe.”
Dwight Samuel’s eyes glittered. He inclined his head a notch in Gideon’s direction. “I’m listening, cousin. Matter of fact, I’m all ears.”
Gideon proceeded to describe, in succulent detail, the rich little savings and loan in Santa Fe—its recent deposits, its ideal location on a quiet side street, its lax-to-nonexistent security. As he laid out his plan, he watched his cousin’s eyes. They reminded him of the eyes of a hungry black bear, contemplating a honeycomb just out of reach.
Rage flared in Gideon a moment, when he remembered Cora. But the feeling left as quickly as it arrived. Dwight had probably done him a favor by taking Cora away. Anyway, by Gideon’s reckoning, that betrayal canceled any debts he owed his cousin. The wife stealing, and the day Dwight had left him to the mercy of Missouri law. The only debt he owed Dwight now was to pay him back in kind.
“Sounds like easy pickings, cousin,” Dwight said when Gideon had concluded. “How you figure to split it?” He angled his head toward the other men around the fire.
Gideon smiled lazily. “Half for the family,” he said, “and let your buzzards fight over the rest.”
“I like your attitude, cousin.” Dwight took in his gang with a dark sweep of his eyes. “That sound all right with you boys?”
As Gideon knew they would, the men nodded silently. It was either that or take a bullet or a blade sometime between now and morning.
“Tomorrow,” Gideon said to Dwight.
The outlaw grinned. “Tomorrow.”
There you go, Banker, Gideon thought. I’ve done it. And right on time, too, just like I said, despite the distraction of your delicious child. I’m bringing you my part o
f the bargain. I’m leading the black sheep to the slaughter.
Then it’s done. And I’m gone. I won’t even take the cash I’d planned to grab to see me across the border. I’m just going. Provided I don’t catch a bullet in the cross fire. But either way I’m gone. Clean and sweet and forever. Because of her. Because of love. Because it’s too damn late for angels.
* * *
The fire had died down to glowing coals and the outlaws lay where they had passed out. Over the snores and the rough sounds of drunk men sleeping, Gideon heard something. He lifted his head from the blanket, listening. Something. He didn’t hear it so much as feel it.
He rose slowly, soundlessly, and moved to the rope line where their horses were picketed. His hand hovered near his hip, a breath away from his gun.
When he saw the dun mare grazing in the moonlight, he bit off a curse. Crazy, headstrong female! What was she doing now, coming back to retrieve her own damn ransom? Instinctively, his hand remained close to his gun. “Honey,” he called softly, half-expecting to be answered with the blast of a shotgun.
She rose from behind a tall clump of broomweed. The moon just touched her face with its pale light, glossed her long dark tumble of hair and sparkled like blue diamonds in her big eyes.
“Oh, Gideon. I thought...I wasn’t sure it was you.” She came rushing then—headlong and hem-tripping and hell-bent—into his arms.
Gideon breathed out a long sigh as he held her. This was so confounded wrong. And so right, the way she fit his embrace as if she had been born to do just that.
His throat was tight and his voice tinged with frustration when he whispered, “What the hell are you doing here, bright eyes?”
“I had to come back to warn you. About the Savings and Loan. My father...”
“Ssh.” He pressed her face into his chest, stilling her words on the off chance that Dwight or one of his men had awakened. “We’ll go up to the mine. We can talk there. I’ll just get the saddle off your horse first.”
Honey watched his easy movements as he relieved Jonquil of her tack. Hard muscles rippled beneath his shirt. Moonlight made deep shadows on the planes of his face while it touched his cinnamon hair with a sugary gloss. He spoke softly to the mare, his voice like a lover.
“Gideon,” Honey said softly.
He looked at her over the horse’s back, arms resting on the loosened saddle, eyes silver as mercury now, their lashes shadowed by moonlight on his cheeks.
“I’m so sorry I slapped you this morning. I thought...”
He raised a finger to his lips, angling his head toward the hill that led to the mine, then he swung the saddle from the mare’s back. “Come on.”
There was a twinkling light in his eyes as he fit one arm around her, pulled her against his hip and started up the hill.
“I’ve never seen a woman so crazy about sleeping out under the stars.” He chuckled low in his throat. “Hell, Ed, honey, haven’t you figured out yet you can do that right in your own backyard?”
“Not with you, I can’t.” She smiled up at him. “I like sleeping under the stars with you, Gideon Summerfield.”
His response was a rough growl.
“In fact,” she continued as he propelled her along, “I like sleeping with you just about anywhere. Under the stars. In a little room in Cerrillos. Here.”
His steps accelerated until he was practically dragging Honey up toward the mine. Once there, he dropped the saddle and pulled her into his arms. “If you had one lick of sense, Honey Logan, you’d be back in Santa Fe right now in your own clean little bed.” His hand curved over the warm richness of her hair. “You’d be dreaming sweet dreams that wouldn’t have anything to do with me.”
She lifted her face to his. “If you had one lick of sense, Gideon, you’d stop all your grousing and kiss me the way I want you to.”
He didn’t have any sense. Not anymore. That had fled the second he saw her. And with a little groan of surrender, Gideon claimed her mouth, losing himself in its sweet pliant warmth, drowning in the rich fragrance of her hair, in the echoes of the tiny moans his kiss drew from her.
It was Honey, breathless, who pulled away. “You take my very breath away, Gideon.”
He cupped her face in his hands, thumbs caressing her cheeks, eyes softly grazing over her. “Do I, bright eyes? Best not kiss you anymore then. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for your untimely demise.”
Her lower lip slid out. “That isn’t what I meant, and you know it. I...do I take your breath away, too? Is it the same for you?”
He laughed softly. “Not quite.” Taking her hand, he pressed it over the savage pounding of his heart. “That’s what you do to me. That and more.”
Honey grinned as she slid her hand down his chest, over the buckle of his belt, then the lower buckle of his gun belt. “More?”
With a gruff exhalation, Gideon scooped her into his arms and walked to the entrance of the mine. There, he lowered himself to the rock-strewn ground and leaned back against one of the solid wooden planks that supported the mine’s opening. He settled Honey on his lap, pressing her head against his shoulder. “Tell me why you came back, Miss No-Sense-At-All. Did you think you could wrestle ten thousand dollars away from five desperate men?”
“I came back to warn you.”
Gideon pressed his chin to the crown of her head. “About what?”
“My mother told me about my father’s plan. About bringing in Dwight and his gang to earn your parole.” Her voice rose a notch, tinged with fear. “But Daddy’s not going to honor his promise, Gideon. Not after what’s happened with me. He’s just not reasonable where I’m concerned.”
“Well, if I were your daddy, I don’t suppose I’d be all that reasonable myself, bright eyes.”
She sniffed. “He wants to keep me under his thumb.”
“He wants to keep you safe from lowlifes like me,” Gideon countered gruffly.
“I don’t want to be safe from you, Gideon. I want to be safe with you. The way I feel right now.”
Chin still resting atop her head, Gideon sighed wearily. “You’d have been better off handcuffing yourself to some slick-haired, shiny-faced young banker. Or maybe I should have just cut your hand off at the wrist that day. Might have hurt a lot less in the long run than breaking your heart.”
“Then don’t break my heart.” She shifted in the circle of his arms, leaning back, raising her face to his. “Love me, Gideon. Marry me. Let’s go to Kansas and grow corn and blue-eyed babies.”
He shook his head, closing his eyes to blot out the impossible dream she kept dangling before him like a mesmerizing charm. She promised him life. But to get that life, first he’d have to go through the gates of hell, make his home in hell until they let him go. Assuming he survived. Assuming Honey would wait.
“I’ll go with you,” she said, as if reading his thoughts. “Anywhere. Mexico. South America. If Kansas means prison, then let’s go the other way.”
“I wouldn’t do that to you, bright eyes. It’s a hell of a life. You deserve better.”
Her eyes locked on his, fierce, determined, full of need. “I deserve a life with the man I love. No more. No less.”
“That’s the problem, darlin’. I can’t offer you anything more than less.”
“Well, fine.” Honey flattened her hands against his chest, pushing away, as her feet struggled to find a purchase on the rocky ground. “Just go ahead and walk away from me, Gideon. I’ll find somebody else. Someday. Somebody who won’t walk away. Somebody who doesn’t think love can’t survive if it doesn’t come easy.” Honey kicked the hem of her skirt out of her way and walked to the opposite side of the mine entrance.
“I’m not made out of spun sugar and lace, for your information,” she shouted. “I’m not looking for a bed of roses either.”
Dammit, Gideon thought. A bed of roses was the least she deserved from any man. But the thought of any man lying down with her in that bed was almost more than he could bear. She wa
s made of spun sugar and lace on top of all that iron and grit. She was as beautiful and innocent and stubborn as God’s stubbornest angel. The angel he needed on his side. His, if he was man enough to have her, strong enough to earn the right to have her by his side.
He stood and walked slowly to her, drew her more slowly still into his arms, burying his face in the warm sweet hollow of her neck. “Angel,” he whispered brokenly. “You almost make me believe there’s a heaven.”
Her arms circled his waist. “There is, Gideon. There is a heaven, and you make me feel worthy of it.”
She tilted her head, seeking his face, discovering the tremor of his mouth and the glistening moisture in his eyes. Honey rose on tiptoe then, kissing him, tasting the hot brine of the tears that clung to his eyelashes. “Choose heaven, Gideon. Please. Choose me.”
He had no choice. No choice but to take her sweet, wet mouth like a man dying of thirst in the desert, to taste his own tears on her cheeks, to drink them like a life-giving elixir. No choice but to lower her gently to the ground and lose himself in the soft heaven of her, find himself in the passionate light in her eyes, give himself to her with tears and whispered words of love, take her, body and soul, unto himself.
“Angel,” he murmured almost soundlessly into the drift of her hair. “Please wait for me on the other side of hell.”
* * *
“Honey. Wait.”
It was just after first light when Gideon and Honey were walking down the rocky slope toward the campfire where Dwight Samuel and his four men were sitting, their heads bent over morning coffee.
Gideon’s hand tightened on Honey’s arm and his voice was low. “We need to give them a good reason why you came back,” he said. “I don’t want my cousin to be suspicious. Not even for a minute.”
Without a word then, and in full view of the men at the bottom of the hill, Honey turned and looped her arms around Gideon’s neck, whispering, “Then I guess you’ll just have to kiss me the way the king of the goats would kiss a woman who couldn’t stay away.”
